Read Ebook: Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Third General Meeting of the American Library Association Held at Waukesha Wisconsin July 4-10 1901 by American Library Association General Meeting Editor

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As in many other circulating libraries, new copyrighted fiction is the chief staple supplied by the "Book-Lovers' Library"--the sweetest pabulum automatically administered.

After a season of such dissipation call in a neurologist to diagnose your patient, and he will advise you that by continuing the treatment the mind will be reduced to a sieve, if not ultimately to absolute imbecility. Having abandoned the more serious literature that calls into use all the faculties of the mind, the reader of nothing but fiction converts what would otherwise be a healthful recreation into dissipation, that is enervating and permanently debilitating to all the faculties of the mind, when carried to an extreme. Had the reader been denied the use of this automatic machine, and been compelled, as formerly, to browse through the book store in search of something to read, more serious books would have been selected--history, travel, descriptive writing or popular science, with an occasional novel by way of recreation.

The causes that have led up to this result are manifold: 1st. They were strenuously urged, and they finally consented to allow discounts:

To ministers of the gospel, since they are public benefactors.

To school teachers, since they are public educators and benefactors.

To public libraries, since they are for the most part eleemosynary institutions, and hence entitled to charity.

Indeed, when I recount the charitable benefactions that have been exacted and received at the hands of the retail bookseller, he seems to me to have been the most saintly character that has lived in my day and generation. And right here it is of interest to note that these ministers, these teachers, these physicians, these public librarians were actually receiving out of the hands of the public stated salaries that exceeded by far the annual net profit of the average bookseller.

To dry-goods stores, where they have been put on "bargain counters" and sold at less than cost, to attract customers to their stores.

To publishers of local newspapers, who give the books away as premiums or sell them at cost prices, to increase the local circulation of their papers.

To mail-order agencies, who advertise the books at less than they are usually sold for by dealers.

From what I have said, it must be apparent that booksellers, as well as librarians, have a province of their own, and perform a service that cannot be delegated to another. And hence it is desirable that we live and dwell together in peace and amity.

But in these days of combinations, reorganizations and revolutions in the conduct of business, the publishers have looked farther, in their quest for more economical purveying agents. For the past ten years they have been trying to induce the dry-goods merchants to carry books. But, after all this time, not more than half a dozen department stores carry fairly representative stocks of books. They confine themselves, for the most part, to new copyrighted fiction, and of this they handle only that which is widely advertised.

The effect of this recent drift of the trade has been to stimulate the frothy side of literature to an extreme degree. The more serious literature is being neglected. The latest novel is the fad. Its average life is reduced to little more than one year, though the copyright lasts for twenty-eight years, and with a renewal it may be extended to forty-two years.

This shortening of the life of books has had a baneful effect:

Baneful to the bookseller, since it frequently leaves him with a dead stock of books on hand that cannot be turned without loss.

Baneful to the publisher, since the book stops selling and the plates become valueless before he has had time fairly to recoup himself for the expense of bringing it out, advertising it, and putting it on the market.

Baneful to the author, since by shortening the life of his books the value of his property in them is reduced.

But perhaps the most baneful effect of this craze for ephemeral literature is upon the people themselves. As the standard or degree of civilization for a given age is marked by the character of the literature the people produce and read, we cannot hope for a golden age in American letters, unless the present system is reversed. Work of real merit is never done by accident, nor is it the product of mediocre talents. If we are to develop a national literature that shall fitly characterize the sterling qualities of the American people in this, the full strength of the early manhood of the nation; at the time when the nation has taken its place in the vanguard of civilization; at the time when the consumptive power of the nation is equal to one-third of that of the entire civilized world; at the time when men of talents and genius are annually earning and expending, for their comfort and pleasure, more munificent sums than were ever lavished on the most opulent princes; I say, if we are to produce a literature that shall fitly characterize this age of our nation, we must hold forth such rewards for the pursuits of literature as will attract men of genius, men of the most lustrous talents, men who are the peers of their co-workers in other walks of life. But this will not be possible so long as the present strife to furnish cheap literature to the people continues.

It should be observed that the bookseller has not suffered alone in this cheapening process. The publisher has suffered. Within the past few months two names that for half a century were household words, synonyms of all that is excellent in the publishing world, have met with disaster, and others were approaching a crisis.

The publishers canvassed thoroughly the causes that had led to the decline of the trade, and they appointed a committee to draft reform measures.

In reviewing the decline of the trade, two facts stood out so prominently that it was impossible to disassociate them as cause and effect. The three thousand booksellers, upon whom, as purveying agents, the publishers had depended a generation ago, had shrunk in number until only about five hundred could be counted who were worthy to be called booksellers. The other fact, which doubtless made quite as deep an impression upon the minds of the publishers, was that the long line of books, on each of their published catalogs, was practically dead. Those books of high standard character, by eminent authors, books that for years had had a good annual sale, no longer moved. These standard books have been a large source of revenue to publishers and their authors for many years. But now so few of them are sold that it hardly pays the publishers to send their travellers over the road.

Few dry-goods merchants, druggists, newsdealers and stationers, that have recently been induced to carry a small number of books, feel sufficiently well acquainted with salable literature to warrant their carrying anything more than the most popular-selling new copyrighted novels and cheap reprints of non-copyrighted books that sell for twenty-five cents or less. As stated above, there are a few large department stores that carry a more general stock, but they are so few that the support received from them is not sufficient to compensate, in any measure, the loss sustained through the sacrifice of the regular booksellers. Moreover, the regular booksellers that still remain in the business have not been buying many standard books of late. Seeing their profit in fiction sacrificed by unfair competition, many of them have ordered only enough of the new copyrighted novels to keep alive their accumulated stocks of standard books, until they can sell them out or reduce them to a point where they can afford to abandon the book business.

This, in a word, is the substance of the publishers' plan. They have agreed to cut off absolutely the supply of all of their books, net, copyrighted and otherwise, to any dealer who cuts the retail price of a book published under the net-price system.

On the other hand, the nearly eight hundred members of the American Booksellers' Association have entered into a mutual agreement to push with energy the sale of the books of all publishers who co-operate with them for the maintenance of retail prices, and not to buy, nor put in stock, nor offer for sale, the books of any publisher who fails to co-operate with them. This is substantially the same system that was adopted in Germany in 1887, in France a few years later, and in England in 1900.

The effect of this system in Germany has been to lift up the trade from a condition even more deplorable, if possible, than that into which it has fallen in this country, and to make it a prosperous and profitable business. It has proved beneficent and satisfactory, not only to dealers and publishers, but also to authors and to the reading public, for every city, town and village in Germany now sustains a book shop that carries a fairly representative stock of books, so that the people are able to examine promptly every book as soon as it comes from the press, and the authors are sure of having their books promptly submitted to the examination of every possible purchaser.

The results in France and England are equally encouraging, and it is believed that as soon as the American system is fully understood, and as soon as enough books are included under the net-price system, so that a bookseller can once more make a living on the sale of books, many of the old-time booksellers will again put in a stock of books and help to re-establish the book trade in America.

Having tried to define the present relation of publishers and booksellers, I beg leave to say frankly that I know of no reason why publishers and booksellers should maintain any different relations with librarians than they maintain with any other retail customers.

For example, let us take the new "Book-Lovers' Library," so called. Their plan is to sell memberships, and to deliver to each member one book a week for five dollars a year, or three books a week for ten dollars a year. They take up the books at the end of each week and supply new ones.

If this plan could be carried out successfully, it would result in making one book do the service now performed by ten or fifteen books. In other words, this circulating library proposes to furnish its members with ten or fifteen books for the same amount of money they now pay for one book by simply passing the book around from one to another.

The encouragement and support given to authors, by patrons of literature, would be reduced by this scheme to about one-tenth of the present amount. The effect of this withdrawal of support to American authors can easily be imagined.

But I do not believe that real book-lovers, intelligent and conservative readers, will be carried away by this passing craze. On the contrary, they have studiously avoided forming that careless, slip-shod habit of reading that characterizes patrons of circulating libraries. The real book-lover selects his books like his friends, with caution, and with discriminating and painstaking care.

From a bookseller's point of view, the "Book-Lovers' Library" is not founded on practical lines. However, as the plan also includes the selling of capital stocks to its patrons, it is probable that the money received from subscriptions, together with the annual membership fees, will be sufficient to keep the enterprise going for some time. But since this is a corporation organized for the purpose of making money, a failure to earn money and to pay dividends will discourage its patrons, cause them to feel that they have been deceived, and finally to withdraw from membership. When the members realize that they are paying five or ten dollars a year for privileges that can be had free at the local library, in most cases they will withdraw their support.

Thus, while in some respects I regard this enterprise as an evil factor, it contains, I think, inherent weaknesses that will finally compass its own end.

But what is said of the relation of publishers and dealers to the Book-Lovers' Library is true in a measure of all circulating and other public libraries. They do not increase, but they positively contract the number of sales that are made in the interest of authors, publishers and dealers.

Under the German system, of which I have spoken, public libraries were at first allowed ten per cent. discount; but recently this has been reduced to five per cent.

Under the English system, profiting by the experience of German publishers, no discount is allowed to public libraries, schools or institutions.

The American system, however, is modelled largely after the German, and it permits the dealers to allow a discount of ten per cent. to local libraries. In doing this local dealers are protected from competition by the publishers, in that the publishers have agreed to add to the net price the cost of transportation on all books sold at retail outside of the cities in which they are doing business. Thus public libraries can buy net books cheaper of the local booksellers than they can buy them of the publishers by just the cost of transportation.

LIBRARY BUILDINGS.

A building is not the first requisite of a public library. A good collection of books with a capable librarian will be of great service in a hired room or in one corner of a store. First the librarian, then the books and after that the building.

But when the building is occupied the value of the library is doubled. The item of rent is dropped. The library is no longer dependent on the favor of some other institution and is not cramped by the effort to include two or three departments in a single room. It will not only give far better service to the community, but will command their respect, interest and support to a greater degree than before.

The following hints are intended as a reply to many library boards who are asking for building plans.

The vital point in successful building is to group all the parts of a modern library in their true relations. To understand a particular case it will be necessary to ask some preliminary questions.

The above figures give full capacity. In practical work, to provide for convenient classification, expansion, oversized books and working facilities, the shelves of a library should be sufficient for twice the actual number of books and the lines of future enlargement should be fully determined.

The following outlines taken from actual library buildings are offered by way of suggestion.

An inexpensive building for a small country neighborhood may have one square room with book shelves on the side and rear walls. A convenient entrance is from a square porch on one side of the front corner and a librarian's alcove is at the opposite corner leaving the entire front like a store window which may be filled with plants or picture bulletins. With a stone foundation the wooden frame may be finished with stained shingles.

A somewhat larger building may have a wider front with entrance at the center.

Book shelves under high windows may cover the side and rear walls and tables may stand in the open space.

It will be convenient to bring together the books most in demand for circulation on one side of the room and those needed most for study on the opposite side. One corner may contain juvenile books. In this way confusion between readers, borrowers and children will be avoided. Each class of patrons will go by a direct line to its own quarter. This is the beginning of the plan of departments which will be of great importance in the larger building.

The number of books for circulation will increase rapidly and it may soon be necessary to provide double faced floor cases. These will be placed with passages running from the center of the room towards the end and that end will become the book or delivery room and the opposite side will be the study or reference room.

The next step is to add space to the rear giving a third department to the still open room. If the book room is at the back the student readers may be at tables in the right hand space and the children in the space on the left. The librarian at a desk in the center is equally near to all departments and may exercise full supervision.

The presence of a considerable number of other busy persons has a sobering and quieting effect on all and the impression of such a library having all its departments in one is dignified and wholesome. It may be well to separate the departments by light open hand rails, screens, cords or low book cases. It is a mistake to divide a small building into three or four small rooms.

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